I'm Making Cheese!

Labneh (lab-nay) is a Lebanese cheese made from yogurt. It's similar to cream cheese in consistency but the taste is slightly lighter.

It is quite possibly one of the easiest things I've ever made and it is to-die-for delicious!

Step One: Take a container of yogurt (full fat, low/non-fat are all good options!) and stir in a pinch of salt.
Step Two: Pour into 4-ply of cheesecloth lining a colander in the sink. The first 5-10 minutes will yield a lot of liquid seeping out, hence the sink. 

Step Three: After the initial 10-minute drain-off, secure the four corners of your cheesecloth together to make a sac, and hang your cheesecloth sac above a bowl. 

You can see that I used a bag clip to secure my cheesecloth together and wound a piece of wire through the bag clip so that I could hang the sac from a handle in my kitchen.

Step Five: There is no photo of this, but after 12-24 hours of dripping, open up your cheesecloth sac to find the luscious creamy cheese that you've made. Make little (walnut-sized) balls and put them onto a plate. Put the plate of balls into the fridge for the cheese to solidify a little more.
Step Six: Above - put the balls into a jar (or other storage container) and fill to cover with olive oil. At this point you can add a selection of herbs to flavour the oil. I added a mixture of oregano and basil. 

Step Seven - It's ready to eat right away, but if you want to store it, keep it in the fridge up to two months! I love how the oil and the herbs stick to the cheese and become a part of it once you spread it! Yum!

Edit: the olive oil congeals in the fridge so I did some research on storage. Apparently you can store it in the pantry, so that's where mine is now :-)